balthisar
Full Access Members
I ordered my 2022 expedition stealth max in November 2021. I am so frustrated at this point because my order has been delayed multiple times since April that I reached out to my dealer and asked him if I could just grab one off the lot. They have 11! He said I couldn't since I have rebates from back in November that wouldn't apply to a Expedition off the lot. Keep in mind they have my EXACT car about 2 of them on the lot. Window stickers exactly the same just different VIN. Has anyone had any luck just getting one off the lot??
Just FYI, this isn't a scam. You're currently price-protected back to November 2021. This is actually dealer price protection, too. It means they've paid a lot more for those units on the lot today than they're going to pay for your unit when it finally arrives. If they honor your pricing, it's possible that their margins are close to or below zero due to the difference.
The rebate thing is in addition to the Ford price increases (price protection). You get the better of incentives from when you ordered the truck versus incentives today. Incentives are from Ford, not from the dealership, and they are tied to the specific unit that your ordered. Ford (not the dealership) won't protect incentives on vehicles that weren't ordered when they were in effect.
If you're willing to pay current prices and use current incentives (if any), then I'm sure the dealer would be happy to accommodate you, but it's definitely not sketchy that they won't honor previous pricing.
There's a bit of game theory at play here, too. If you take a unit off the lot, the dealer will still get the unit you ordered, which is above their allocation. They'll be able to sell it at retail at current prices, but because the sale won't be to a person with your exact name (well, maybe), price protection won't apply, meaning that Ford will be happy that the dealer has to pay today's rates. And too many of the orders sold but not matched against a real name that ordered it will hurt the dealer, too, because Ford doesn't like it when dealers game the allocation system.
This means that even if you're willing to pay today's prices for a unit on the lot, the dealer isn't necessarily going to be happy with the additional allocation, even if he can sell it, if he's had a lot of cancellations already.
It almost makes Tesla's system look ridiculously easy, doesn't it?